Love in an elevator
by Tez
Summary: Being trapped on an elevator alone with Jordan is a dream come true for Woody...right? WJ, angstfluff


Disclaimer: I don't own Crossing Jordan, or this would have actually happened.  
A/N: This takes place a week after Someone To Count On. Jordan doesn't know anything about Woody's family situation, and he doesn't know about her encounter with Digger. The show never really dealt with the aftermath of the Digger situation on Jordan's psyche, but things like that don't just go away...

* * *

_Where am I gonna look?  
__They tell me that love is blind  
__I really need a girl like an open book  
__To read between the lines  
__  
__Aerosmith, Love In An Elevator_

* * *

"Hold the elevator!" 

I grab at the closing doors, managing to hold them open long enough for Jordan to duck inside. She's looking gorgeous as usual, her faded jeans hugging her sexy curves and her shirt just low-cut enough to make my heart speed up without actually revealing anything. When she realizes I'm the one holding the doors, she grins up at me, her honey-colored eyes dancing with warmth.

"Hey, Woody," she says cheerfully, leaning against the elevator wall as we start to descend. "I didn't know you were here."

"Nigel had a ballistics report he wanted me to see." I give her a tentative smile. "I was going to stop by and say hi, but I couldn't find you."

"I was in Trace," she explains. "I was – oh!"

The elevator jolts to a stop. We both stumble, but I recover my balance in time to catch Jordan before she falls.

"You okay?" I ask, helping her stand.

"Yeah," she says shakily, looking up at the ceiling. "What was that?"

"The elevator must have broken down."

She pulls away from me, looking around the small confines of the elevator before going over to the buttons, pushing them ineffectively.

"Jordan?"

She doesn't look up, muttering under her breath as she stabs at the button for the lobby. I reach out and capture her hand in mine, holding it still.

"Jordan," I repeat, squeezing her fingers to get her attention. She's acting strange, even for her. "That's not going to help. I'm pretty sure we're stuck."

"No," she says flatly, yanking her hand away from me and continuing to press the button marked 'L' in time with her repetition of the word. "No. No-no-no-no-no."

I grab her hand again, turning her around to face me. When I get a glimpse of her expression, my heart leaps into my throat. We're stuck in the elevator, but we're not in any danger; there's no reason for her to look that panicked unless…

"You're claustrophobic," I realize aloud, knowing it's the only explanation for the stark terror in her eyes. She shudders, clenching her eyes shut and shaking her head in denial.

"Woody, we can't be stuck," she whispers, her voice shaking with fear. "I can't – I can't do this. I can't be stuck here."

"It'll be okay," I tell her, thinking fast. "I'll call for help."

"No service," she replies flatly. "No cell signal. It's blocked by the building."

I pull out my phone anyway, sighing when I realize she's right. I don't have any service.

"There's a phone on the elevator," I recall suddenly, reaching down below the rows of buttons for the handle to the little cabinet. I open it to find a coil of telephone cord, the ends frayed where they've been cut. Someone's removed the phone receiver.

Jordan whimpers from behind me. I turn around in time to see her trying to slip her fingers into the thin crevasse between the elevator doors. She grapples with the doors, trying fruitlessly to pry them open. I come over to rest my hands on her shoulders, knowing that the doors won't open between floors.

"That won't work," I tell her gently. She chokes on a sob, shrugging away from me and staggering backwards until she bumps into the opposite wall. When her back hits the wall she slides slowly down it, sinking to the floor.

"Jordan –" I begin, kneeling next to her, but she cuts me off.

"I can't breathe," she gasps, her hands moving protectively to her throat. "Woody, I can't breathe. There's no air –"

"Shh," I instruct her, lifting her up in my arms and setting her in my lap. She struggles instinctively but I hold on as tight as I can, pinning her against my chest until she stops fighting me. "Think, Jordan. I know you're scared, but calm down for a second and _think_ about this. The elevator is attached to the building's central air system. Look up and you can see the vent. There's plenty of air circulating; you can breathe just fine."

She's trembling all over now, but she looks up obediently, staring at the vent like she's drowning and it's a lifeline. Finally she nods, and I sigh in relief as she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"See?" I murmur, running my fingers gently through her messy chestnut-hued curls. "Now take another breath. Nice and slow…good. Good, Jordan."

"There wasn't any air," she whispers, tears gathering in her eyes and slipping silently down her cheeks. "I couldn't breathe…not even enough to call for help. I was screaming on the inside, but I couldn't make it come out…I couldn't get out…"

"Whoa," I say, stunned. I don't know what she's referring to, but she was obviously traumatized by it. I'd guess it's why she's afraid of enclosed spaces. "Jordan, what are you talking about?"

"He buried me," she continues over my question, and I realize she didn't even hear me. She's too far gone. "I was still alive and he closed the lid…I could hear the dirt hitting the wood and I tried to get out but I couldn't – God, I have to get out, I can't _breathe_ –"

"Jordan!" I shake her firmly by the shoulders, and her head jerks toward me in shock. "Look at me," I continue, fear for her making my tone harsher than usual. I've got to snap her out of this; if she has a nervous breakdown here, I won't be able to get help. "Listento me, Jordan. You know who I am, right?"

She nods hesitantly. "Woody," she supplies, and I squeeze her shoulders, my voice softening.

"That's right. You know me…you _know_ me, Jordan. Do you really think I would ever let anything happen to you?"

"No," she whispers, reluctant. "No. But –"

"No buts. I'm right here with you, Jo. Nothing is going to hurt you; nothing and no one. You're safe. You have my word on that, and you know I never break a promise. Okay?"

She looks up at me for a long moment and then closes her eyes, nodding in assent. "Okay."

"Okay," I repeat, wrapping my arms around her again. She's still sitting in my lap, and as she snuggles against me I realize that, at any other time, I'd be ecstatic to be in this position. Hell, it took me a month to work up the courage to start putting my hand on the small of her back when we walk around crime scenes together. Holding her this way is practically a fantasy come true…but I didn't want it to happen like this. Sympathy for her overwhelming fear has knocked any romantic inclination out of my mind. All I want is for her to feel safe again.

We sit like that for a few minutes, Jordan's cheek pressed to my chest as her breathing slowly evens out. The front of my shirt has developed a damp spot, but I don't say anything to her about it. The last thing she needs is for me to comment on the fact that she's crying. If I know her half as well as I think I do, she's embarrassed enough about showing weakness in front of me without me pointing it out.

Finally she sits up straight again, swiping surreptitiously at the tear tracks on her cheeks. I note with mixed interest and concern that she doesn't make any move to leave my embrace.

"You don't have a clue what's going on with me, do you?"

The question sounds rhetorical, but I answer her anyway.

"Nope." I lean down, pressing a chaste kiss to the top of her head. "But I'd like to, if you want to talk about it. If you don't, though, that's okay too. Whatever makes you more comfortable."

She hesitates for so long that I think she's not going to tell me. When she finally does start to talk, her voice quakes so badly that it reminds me of the stammer I had as a kid.

"Th-there was a serial killer loose in B-Boston, a little b-before you moved here. I d-don't know if you heard about it." She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Th-the papers tagged him 'Digger'."

"I read about it," I recall aloud. At the time, I'd been excited about the different types of cases I'd get to work on in a big city like Boston. Reading about that case was what convinced me once and for all that I wanted to take a transfer to the Boston PD. "He was killing women, right? The papers said he buried them…" Suddenly I make the connection between the case and her fear, feeling like someone's kicked me in the stomach. "…alive. My God, he…Jordan, he did it to you?"

She nods wordlessly, tears welling up in her eyes again, and I tighten my arms around her protectively. The idea of a perp doing something like that to her makes me want to find the bastard and bash his head against a wall three or four hundred times. No wonder she's claustrophobic.

"Oh, man, Jordan." I rub her back gently as she ducks her head, trying to hide her tears as she brushes them away. "I'm so sorry, baby."

"He k-kidnapped me from the morgue," she whispers, sniffling. "He drugged me so I wouldn't struggle. He put a walkie-talkie in the coffin with me so he could listen to me beg for my life. I told him I wouldn't, but in the end…" She shudders. "First I threatened him, then I tried to make him listen to reason, but in the end I begged. It didn't matter. He left me there to die anyway. I was running out of air…I panicked and tried to claw my way out."

She looks down at her fingers, two of which have newly-broken fingernails, and I realize she must have broken them when she was trying to pry open the elevator doors.

"Actually, my hands looked a lot like this afterward," she adds with a humorless laugh. "And my nails just finished growing back from the last time, too."

I take her hands in mine, examining the broken nails before pressing light kisses to her affected fingers. She sighs quietly, resting her forehead against my shoulder.

"How did you get out?"

"Haley, the FBI profiler on the case. He and Garret found me." She sniffles again. "I heard one of the paramedics tell Haley that if they'd been ten minutes later, I would've suffocated."

I don't know what to say to that, so I just hold on to her for all I'm worth. She returns my tight grip, seeming content to sit quietly in my arms while I assimilate what she's told me.

"How are you feeling now?" I ask finally, after a few minutes of silence. She shrugs, glancing up at me with tired eyes.

"Better than before," she admits. "But I'd still rather have my toes amputated with a dull scalpel than be trapped in this box."

"Well, that's…graphic," I reply, and am rewarded with a little laugh from Jordan. She's still visibly upset, but a laugh is a laugh, and at this point I'll take what I can get.

"I have to say, though, the company is better in this box than it was in the last one." Her lips quirk upward into a reluctant smile. "I'm _really _glad you're here, Woody."

"I'm glad, too," I agree whole-heartedly. If Jordan had been trapped in this elevator alone, she'd have gone insane by now. "Hey, I've got an idea."

"Nothing good ever comes after those five words."

"Ha, ha," I say, deadpan. "Let's play a game."

"What kind of game?"

I shrug; I hadn't thought that far ahead. I was just trying to distract her.

"How about Twenty Questions?"

She looks closely at my face for a long moment, then shrugs. "Bread box," she says, and I shake my head in disbelief.

"How did you know I was thinking that?"

"Because you're you." With that obscure response, she raises an eyebrow at me. "How about Never Have I Ever?"

"I don't know how to play."

"It's a twist on Truth or Dare," she explains. "You say something you've done, and the other person has to admit it if they've done it too. If they have, they have to tell you the story. If they haven't, you have to tell them your story."

"Sounds vaguely humiliating."

"Oh, it can be. But it's also a whole lot of fun."

"All right," I sigh, twirling a strand of her hair around my finger. I hate games like this one, but if it's going to take Jordan's mind off of our current situation, I'm more than willing to suffer through it. "You go first."

"Hmm." She gives me a speculative look, and then a grin breaks across her lovely face. "Never have I ever gone skinny dipping."

I pause, trying to decide if I can lie to her and get away with it. The fact that she knew what I was thinking during Twenty Questions tells me I'm going to get caught if I try.

"Miller's Pond after Homecoming, my senior year of high school. On a dare."

"Why, Woodrow, you've been holding out on me," she teases. "I always knew there was a wild child in there somewhere."

"My turn," I inform her with a laugh. "Okay…never have I ever gone to work so hungover that I was still drunk."

She snorts. "I think I spent a full six months doing that in LA. I can't believe you have, though. Woody 'Midwestern Values' Hoyt, drunk at work?"

"Hey, I can be complicated," I tell her, echoing what I told her last week at the Pogue. She nods slowly, looking thoughtful.

"Never have I ever had my heart broken."

"Jeez," I mutter, leaning my head back against the wall. Jordan's ingrained tendency to go for the jugular is showing through. "Three times."

"So many?"

I sigh. "Once when my mom died, once when my dad died, and once when my ex-girlfriend's father told me I wasn't good enough to marry his daughter."

Jordan looks stricken. "Oh, Woody," she whispers, reaching out tentatively to touch my jaw. "I'm sorry, I didn't know –"

"It's okay, Jo," I tell her quietly. "My mom died of cancer when I was six. My dad was a cop; he was shot in a convenience store robbery when I was sixteen. And two months before I moved to Boston, my girlfriend Annie's father told me there was no way he was going to let his little girl marry a kid with no money, no family, and no future."

Jordan shakes her head firmly, her eyes alight with righteous indignation on my behalf, and for a split second I picture what it would be like to take Jordan to Wisconsin and introduce her to all the people who ever did me wrong. They'd never even know what hit them. In the entire history of the town, Kewaunee has never seen anything like Jordan Cavanaugh.

"He was so wrong about you," she mutters, her anger almost palpable.

"You think so?"

She gives me an incredulous look. "Woody, he'd have to be a complete moron not to want you to marry his daughter. You're the ideal husband."

"Oh?" Now I'm interested. "Why?"

"Well, you're a good man, for starters. You're kind and decent and honest…you're smart and funny and handsome…and I bet you're a hopeless romantic."

"That's an important quality for the ideal husband?"

She laughs. "Everybody wants flowers on Valentine's Day, Woody."

I make a mental note of that, knowing Jordan has just slipped and told me something about herself that she wouldn't normally reveal. Now all I have to do is find out what kind of flowers she likes.

"I'll remember that," I tease her gently. "Now, I believe it's my turn. I have to think of a good one…"

"Before you do, Woody, I…" She clears her throat, her eyes suspiciously bright. "I'm really sorry about your parents."

"I know you are," I tell her, brushing my thumb against the back of her hand. "You understand what it's like."

She's silent for a moment, and then she sighs heavily. "You understand, too," she says, and I can see from her expression that she's just realized – maybe for the first time in her life – that she isn't alone. She isn't the only person in the world whose parent was murdered when they were young. Granted, I was six years older than she was when my dad was killed, but I lost my mom at a younger age than she did, so I figure we're pretty much even. "God, I've been such a selfish jerk –"

"No," I interrupt, tapping my finger lightly against her lips. "No, you haven't. You've been searching for answers, and believe me, I get that. But the next time you feel like nobody knows what you're going through with your mother's murder, just remember that there really is somebody who understands."

She nods slowly, a stray tear slipping down her cheek, and I use my thumb to smooth it away.

"It's my turn," I say again, deciding that I should change the subject before she gets upset over this, which would defeat the whole purpose of distracting her with the game. Reaching for a topic, I pick the first thing that comes to mind, not realizing until after I've said it that it might not be the wisest choice. "Never have I ever been in love."

She smiles shyly at me. "I don't know," she says slowly, and something about her expression makes my stomach twist with anticipation. "I haven't figured it out yet. Keep checking back with me."

"Hmm," I reply, my heart beating triple-time. Jordan bites her bottom lip tentatively, looking up at me.

"Since I didn't say 'yes', you have to tell your story," she reminds me. I nod in agreement, hoping I'm not about to make the biggest mistake of my life.

"Well, it's not really a story."

"No?"

"Nah. I haven't told her."

"Oh." She looks apprehensive. "Why not?"

"I don't want to scare her off. She's not sure how she feels yet…but I intend to keep checking back with her."

A smile dances across her lips, and the butterflies in my stomach kick it up a notch. I've never been any good at flirting with women, let alone a beautiful, self-assured woman like Jordan, but from the look on her face I'd guess I'm not doing too bad a job.

"Really?" she muses, her smile widening. "Interesting." She pauses, then nods to herself. "Okay, my turn."

"Fire away."

"Never have I ever kissed someone in an elevator."

"Nope. Which elevator was it?"

"This one."

I look down at her, realization dawning as she captures my lips with hers. The kiss is tender and passionate all at once, our mouths melding seamlessly as we hold each other close. I've waited a long time for this, but it was worth it. I could swear the earth actually moves. When she pulls away a split second later, I realize I was right: the earth is moving. More specifically, the elevator is moving.

Jordan scrambles to her feet, staring in disbelief as the lit numbers at the top of the elevator change. I follow her lead, standing beside her and watching the slow descent. Her hand reaches blindly for mine, her eyes transfixed to the number display, and I take it wordlessly in my own.

When the light switches from '2' to 'L', we both hold our breath, Jordan's fingers squeezing mine in a death grip. It's almost anticlimactic: the doors slide open to reveal a nondescript guy in a repairman's uniform and an otherwise empty lobby.

"Jeez, I didn't know there were people in there," he exclaims, looking us over. "It took twenty minutes for Security to figure out the elevator was stuck. Why didn't you call for help?"

"Because somebody removed the phone," I tell him shortly, tugging on Jordan's hand to get her to move. She looks dumbfounded, as though she hadn't ever expected to see the outside world again. "You might want to do something about that."

"Thank you," Jordan says to him, sounding stunned, and he gives her an odd look.

"You okay, lady?"

"She's not big on small spaces," I explain, turning to face her. "Jordan?"

She blinks, shaking off her stupor, and I can practically see the realization that we're free registering with her.

"I…I need some air," she says unsteadily, staring at the glass doors to the outside. I give the repairman a nod and lead Jordan toward the doors, feeling her hand trembling in mine. Once we're outside she stops on the steps, tilting her face up toward the sun and taking a deep breath of the crisp autumn air.

"You know," she murmurs, contemplative, "I never really appreciated the outdoors until recently. I guess it's true what they say."

"What?"

She smiles slightly, her eyes still focused on the sky. "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

"I don't know about that," I reply, watching the way the sunlight illuminates her, making her eyes sparkle and her hair shine. Her smile widens and I wrap my arms around her from behind, letting her lean her head back against my chest as we watch the sun begin to set. She's still shaken up over being trapped in the elevator, I know, and on top of that we've let the cat out of the bag about our feelings for each other, which is an issue that needs serious discussion. Right now, though, none of that seems important. Jordan is taking a moment to be glad that she's alive and safe, and she's letting me share the moment with her. That's all that matters now. Everything else will fall into place in good time.


End file.
